Powered by Twitter Tools
From the spring term to the summer term, following the fee rise, 40% of those taking musical instrument tuition with Bedfordshire Music Service have cancelled their lessons.
This isn’t as high a number as I was expecting, however many people may be doing the same as us, seeing it through to the end of the summer term. It will be interesting to see the figures again in the autumn term.
From the council’s Agenda for the Executive meeting on 7th December 2010, fees, charges and other activities provided funding of £1,105,000. If we said 3,000 people having tuition at £100 a term, that raises £900,000 leaving the ‘charges and other activites’ with the remaining £205,000.
The fees went up 69% and the numbers dropped 40%, so that would be 1,800 people paying £169, raising £912,000, not a massive change from the original amount raised. Does this mean the fees have to go up again to cover the shortfall. I guess not, as the number of staff hours needed to teach would have dropped by 40% in line with the cancellations. Maybe the 40% staffing costs is enough to provide a cost neutral service, but at what cost.
Intentional or otherwise, the impact of these reductions in numbers of users of the service cannot be good for the future of music in Bedfordshire schools.
Powered by Twitter Tools
I was reading the minutes of the CHILDREN’S SERVICES OVERVIEW & SCRUTINY COMMITTEE that took place on Tuesday, 29 March 2011 10.00 a.m. and was interested to read about the stakeholder meeting that took place on 22nd March at Dunstable Fire Station.
From the minutes:
The Portfolio Holder for Children’s Services provided the Committee with the following information:-
…
A meeting had been held on Tuesday 22 March 2001 at Dunstable Fire Station, to which all stakeholders associated with the music service were invited. It was reported that only 18 people attended which was very disappointing. In response to this, several Members of the Committee raised concern that they did now know that the meeting had taken place and that they did not receive an invite and therefore questioned the method of communication taken to inform stakeholders of the meeting. Following a detailed conversation about these concerns, Councillor Mrs A M Lewis clarified that a letter had been issued to all stakeholders and that schools had been asked to cascade the invite to all parents.
…
Now either Councillor Mrs A M Lewis is wrong about the date of the meeting, the one that Jo and attended was held on Tuesday 15th March, or even worse another meeting was held a week later. Continue reading
The new term started this morning at Dunstable Music Centre and as expected following the fee rises, the numbers were reduced. The first day back is always a bit down on normal, so next week will really tell the impact of the rises, but based on today, I would say we were about 30% down. Encouragingly, we did also have some new members start today.
We were also one member of staff down, who is, I understand, not being replaced. Central Bedfordshire say that they intend to continue with the music centres, but to me this is looking like winding down.
I have put the new Dunstable Music Centre summer timetable up on their website.
Powered by Twitter Tools
Posts 
